Poetry Portfolio

Kashif Ahmad

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

Ode To My Cellphone

Going to sleep in the dark nights
with you right next to me.
Forgetting to put a fresh charge on your battery,
Before I go to bed
As I wake up in the morning,
You're the first thing I look at.
When we are on the bus going to school,
I love the lovely tunes you play for me for which I'm grateful to you.
Sometimes I may hurt you which I'm really sorry for
But accidents happen.
At the end of the day,
We both go to sleep together,
While I try my best to remember to recharge your battery.

Sonnet Poem:

He cruise in love that cannot exist
hugging moments that were all too short
his foolish tortured heart cannot resist.
For he did nothing wrong but give his heart, truth

desire all his life-long trials
are hidden falling all slipping away
the love that he discovered only vile.
The time he wasted is time he will pay

these haunted feelings linger in his thought
even in this small quiet room he's lost.
Suffering in such pain. He is not wrong
Our human frailties blind us. Every way

and forever is never what they say
that's the way people live, live only thou way

Memory Poem:

The heat from the summer intense the smell of this rubbery ball,
The sweat sizzles on the hot concrete as it drips down my face.
The sound of the sizzle gives me motivation for success.
Watching the people jumping up and down their seats as they cheer.
What a wonderful feeling.
While I take my last breathe as I shoot for the hoop it seems as though time freezes.
Now I loose the grip of the ball as it takes flight.

Statement About My Poetry:

Poetry, When I think about poetry or when I hear that word first thing
that comes to my mind is rhythm. Through out my school years I thought
all poems had to rhyme. But I learned that not all poems have to rhyme. Out of my three
poems I wrote (Ode, Sonnet, Memory poem) I think my Ode poem is the best one.
In that poem I describe my relationship to the thing I admire which is my cellphone.
It also shows how I feel about my cellphone.

Poet: Marie Howe After The Movie

My friend Michael and I are walking home arguing about the movie.
He says that he believes a person can love someone
and still be able to murder that person.
 
I say, No, that's not love. That's attachment.
Michael says, No, that's love. You can love someone, then come to a day
 
when you're forced to think "it's him or me"
think "me" and kill him.
 
I say, Then it's not love anymore.
Michael says, It was love up to then though.
 
I say, Maybe we mean different things by the same word.
Michael says, Humans are complicated: love can exist even in the
     murderous heart.
 
I say that what he might mean by love is desire.
Love is not a feeling, I say. And Michael says, Then what is it?
 
We're walking along West 16th Street—a clear unclouded night—and I hear my voice
repeating what I used to say to my husband: Love is action, I used to say
     to him.
 
Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to look at
     someone you want to eat and not eat them.
 
Janis Joplin says, take another little piece of my heart now baby.
 
Meister Eckhardt says that as long as we love images we are doomed to
     live in purgatory.
 
Michael and I stand on the corner of 6th Avenue saying goodnight.
I can't drink enough of the tangerine spritzer I've just bought—
 
again and again I bring the cold can to my mouth and suck the stuff from
the hole the flip top made.
 
What are you doing tomorrow? Michael says.
But what I think he's saying is "You are too strict. You are
     a nun."
 
Then I think, Do I love Michael enough to allow him to think these things
     of me even if he's not thinking them?
 
Above Manhattan, the moon wanes, and the sky turns clearer and colder.
Although the days, after the solstice, have started to lengthen,
 we both know the winter has only begun.

Part Of Eve's Discussion

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand,
and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still
and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when
a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop,
very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you
your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like
the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say,
it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.

What The Angels Left

At first, the scissors seemed perfectly harmless.
They lay on the kitchen table in the blue light.
 
Then I began to notice them all over the house,
at night in the pantry, or filling up bowls in the cellar
 
where there should have been apples. They appeared under rugs,
lumpy places where one would usually settle before the fire,
 
or suddenly shining in the sink at the bottom of soupy water.
Once, I found a pair in the garden, stuck in turned dirt
 
among the new bulbs, and one night, under my pillow,
I felt something like a cool long tooth and pulled them out
 
to lie next to me in the dark. Soon after that I began
to collect them, filling boxes, old shopping bags,
 
every suitcase I owned. I grew slightly uncomfortable
when company came. What if someone noticed them
 
when looking for forks or replacing dried dishes? I longed
to throw them out, but how could I get rid of something
 
that felt oddly like grace? It occurred to me finally
that I was meant to use them, and I resisted a growing compulsion
 
to cut my hair, although in moments of great distraction,
I thought it was my eyes they wanted, or my soft belly
 
—exhausted, in winter, I laid them out on the lawn.
The snow fell quite as usual, without any apparent hesitation
 
or discomfort. In spring, as expected, they were gone.
 In their place, a slight metallic smell, and the dear muddy earth.
 

Analysis:

After The Movie-

**"Michael says, No, that's love. You can love someone, then come to a day
when you're forced to think "it's him or me"
think "me" and kill him."**
 

In the poem, this line really stood out to me because I totally agree with it. Marie Howe's brother died from Aids. The narrator talks about someone dying in her poem(s) because she lost someone that was close to her to express her feelings through her poems. I agree with that line because anyone would choose their life over someone else life and if it comes to a point where that person has to pick from their life or someone else life, I'm sure that he/she will pick their own life.

Part of Eve's Discussion-

In the poem Part of Eve's Discussion, it shows that narrator sometime in her life she came to a point where the narrator had to make a really important decision. Marie Howe seems to be the kind of person where they take their time making a decision weather its a big or small decision.

What the Angels Left-

Marie Howe is somehow connected to scissors. In the poem the narrator states " Then I began to notice them all over the house", she starts to see scissors all over the house meaning that she has some relationship with scissors. The narrator likes scissors but she's scared to talk about it as stated in the poem "what if someone notice them when looking for forks or replacing dried dishes". She cuts her own hair with a scissor because in the poem it states

"that felt oddly like grace? It occurred to me finally
that I was meant to use them, and I resisted a growing compulsion
 
to cut my hair, although in moments of great distraction,
I thought it was my eyes they wanted, or my soft belly
—exhausted, in winter"

This means that scissors was meant for her to use.